


Lecture

by NikaV



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:49:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22378240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NikaV/pseuds/NikaV
Summary: The Doctor takes Clara on a trip he thinks she’ll enjoy, but something happens to make the Doctor a whole lot less enthusiastic about the idea.
Kudos: 16





	Lecture

**Author's Note:**

> First written sometime near the end of 2016.

The Tardis landed with a relatively soft thud. Within seconds, Clara was poking her head out of the door. She looked about curiously for a bit – a relatively short bit. Then her head disappeared, back to where it had come from. Soon, her voice floated through the crack left by the open door. 

“Doctor, I thought you said we were going somewhere interesting. Farmland is not within my definition of interesting.” 

It wasn’t long before the Doctor popped his gray-haired head out the door. He, too, looked around for a bit; then started mumbling to himself. 

“I could’ve sworn we were in the right place, at least. Time, well… But place!” 

He raised his eyebrow while experimentally sniffing the air. Apparently judging it to be alright, he stepped out of the blue box fully. Clara’s head came poking out again, carefully eyeing the ground she was about to step on. Muddy but safe, she concluded, then stepped out behind the Doctor. 

Meanwhile, the Doctor had come to his conclusions. 

“Definitely the right time and the right area. We must be a little ways off. Time for a good hike. Unless you’d rather run?” he informed Clara while gazing at a point beyond the horizon. 

Clara looked at the Doctor incredulously, before stepping away from the Tardis a bit. When the Doctor turned to face her again, he started grinning. 

“Or perhaps not all that much of a hike,” he said, pointing at something behind Clara. He immediately took off. Clara ran a few steps to catch back up with him. 

“What is that place, then? Doesn’t look too alien to me,” Clara asked of the Doctor. 

“Well, it wouldn’t,” was the answer. 

Clara rolled her eyes. 

“Alright, let me guess. Still on Earth, then, and in the same time, even.”

“Near future, actually.”

“Still doesn’t answer my question. What is this place?”

“This, my dear Clara, is where history will be made in less than an hour.”

Clara observed the familiar glint of pure excitement in the Doctor’s eyes. In some ways, that glint scared her. Just a little bit. 

“What kind of history?” she asked, warily. 

The Doctor’s grin became wider.

“In that building, the big shiny pentagonal one, someone will give the very first official lecture of the very first official course in xenobiology in the history of this planet. And it starts exactly 53 minutes from now, so we’re just in time.”

Clara, obviously less enthusiastic than the Doctor, looked at him skeptically and said: “Why would we attend something like that?”

The Doctor looked at Clara again, obviously confused. 

“Well, you are a teacher aren’t you?” 

A small pause.

“This is one of the most important educational happenings in at least three decades,” he then asserted, now looking at Clara expectantly.

She suppressed the urge to sigh. Instead, she threw up her hands and replied: “Fine, let’s go see this lecture then. Better lead the way, Doctor.”

* * *

After reaching this agreement, it wasn’t long before they found themselves seated somewhere towards the back of a large rounded lecture hall. Despite being three quarters of an hour early, the room was already almost filled to capacity. Aside from the camera setup built into the room, three more cameras and their crews were set up in strategic points around the room. Clara admitted quietly to herself, and only herself, that she was impressed – at least a little bit. She tried to forget about the fact that her shoes were a muddy mess and thus turned to the Doctor. 

“Do you know who’s going to give this lecture?” she asked him.

“No, I don’t,” he admitted, “But now that I think about it…”

“What is it?” Clara urged, eager for both more information and more distraction. 

“It’s probably someone from UNIT. I used to work with them. I do hope they leave out what they know about Time Lord biology, or we’ll be having words,” the Doctor declared, lowering his eyebrows.

The Doctor wasn’t very talkative after that, so Clara went back to contemplating the mud on her shoes and how ruffled she must look by now. Studying everyone else in the room, though, she concluded that the only one to stand out was, as usual, the Doctor. It seemed that everyone age 40 and up was wearing a toga and sitting closer to the front. Just as Clara was about to remark on that, a hushed silence fell over the room. One of the older people at the front had stood up and moved to the speaker’s platform. 

Most of the introductory speech became like a kind of white noise, right up to the point where the guest lecturer was announced: “… it is my great pleasure to introduce to you Doctor Martha Jones.”

While the crowd broke into applause, beside her the Doctor had gone rigid. His eyes were wide and his eyebrows had shot up higher than usual. He stayed like that until about five seconds after a woman – couldn’t have been a day over 35 – had taken up the speaker’s position. Clara thought their eyes might have met. Then, the Doctor was moving again. Specifically, it seemed like he was sorry for not having a teleport to get them out the building as fast as possible. He made a move to stand up. Clara dragged him back down. 

“What are you doing?” she hissed at him. 

“Clara, we should go.”

* * *

Martha had recognized him immediately. Then again, it had been very hard to miss that he had recognized her. She’d never expected that she would recognize him, if she were ever to see him again. Regeneration was still hard to grasp, but intellectually she knew what it did, and with his kind of lifestyle she was surprised she hadn’t witnessed it a few times. 

She tried not to think about his reaction; or him in general, actually. Still, Martha couldn’t help but look his way specifically a few times during her lecture. The girl with him had managed to calm him down, luckily. 

Maybe she’d get to talk to him later, after the lecture. Martha couldn’t help but be curious as to who the Doctor was now. He looked so different. Only the eyes were the same, so very old. She wondered how much time must have passed for him since she last saw him. It had been just over a decade for her, but that wouldn’t mean anything to the Doctor or his Tardis. 

Martha counted herself lucky that she was so well-versed in the subject matter she was discussing. She secretly scolded herself for being so distracted, and went on to the next point of the presentation.

* * *

When the lecture finished, the Doctor became a whirlwind of activity once again. He practically dragged Clara to the exit. Clara wouldn’t have any of it, though. When she heard someone calling ‘Doctor!’ she stopped altogether. 

“Doctor, someone is calling for you,” she told the Doctor, who was still holding her arm. 

“Why would that be for me? This room is full of doctors,” he replied. 

He tried to get Clara to move again. As he did this, he turned, and locked eyes with Martha again. She was still near the front of the room, trying to get through the crowd. Yet, her calls were very clear. 

“Come on, Clara. We really have to go now,” he urged Clara again. 

Clara looked back at the woman who had been introduced as Martha Jones with apology in her eyes, then disappeared after the Doctor.


End file.
